Carl W. Kenney II is an award winning columnist and novelist. He is committed to engaging readers into a meaningful discussion related to matters that impact faith and society. He grapples with pondering the impact faith has on public space while seeking to understand how public space both hinders and enhances the walk of faith.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

The deaths of Maya Angelou and Vincent Harding leaves a deep void in the soul of black America

I’m sitting
here fighting the paralysis caused by the news of Maya Angelou’s death.Vincent Harding died last week. It’s too soon.The feeling of decomposition has occupied a
space once vacated by hope.

What will
morning bring after midnight comes to blind travellers headed toward a
dream?What do we do after two great
prophets take comfort in a place beyond our knowing?

I’m stuck in
the silence.

Who will
remind us of the lessons from before we were old enough to comprehend?Who will tell us stories about wadding in
water deep enough to drown optimism? Who will be there to calm the weariness
stirred by images large enough to conjure fear?

I’m stuck in
disappointment.

Who will
challenge us not to forget?Who will
mold the minds of the next generation?Angelou and Harding kept us focused. They kept our eyes glued on the waiting
prize.Who will tell us stories about
life before the election of a black president?Who will remind us of the heaviness of walking on soil tainted by the
blood of those slain for refusing to go home?

Harding was a
scholar baptized in struggle.He was a
Mennonite who participated in the Civil Rights Movement. Harding worked in the
campaigns of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Congress of
Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
He drafted many of Dr. Martin Luther King’s speeches.

Harding wrote
books and served as the senior academic consultant for the PBS television series Eyes on the Prize. He made the
connection between scholarship and activism that shadowed the work after King’s
death.

“There’s a
lesson for us: If we lock up Martin Luther King, and make him unavailable for
where we are now so we can keep ourselves comfortably distant from the
realities he was trying to grapple with, we waste King,” Harding said during a
lecture at Goshen College in 2005. “All
of us are being called beyond those comfortable places where it’s easy to be
Christian. That’s the key for the 21st century – to answer the voice within us,
as it was within Martin, which says ‘do something for somebody.’ We can learn
to play on locked pianos and to dream of worlds that do not yet exist."

Angelou was
also active in the Civil Rights movement. She worked with Martin Luther King
and Malcolm X, and was deeply involved with Malcolm after his split from the
Nation of Islam. Before becoming a poet, she held jobs as a night-club dancer,
fry cook, prostitute and a cast-member of the play Porgy and Bess.She became a coordinator for SCLC, a
journalist in Egypt and Ghana, an actress, producer and director of plays,
movies and television programs.

Angelou is
known best for I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings, her autobiography that exposed aspects of her personal life. She taught us that telling the truth can set
you free.

Mary Lee, her
maternal great-grandmother, was emancipated after the Civil War. Lee became
pregnant by her former white owner who forced her to sign a false statement
accusing another man of being the father of her child. It was part of a past that many were too
ashamed to tell.

Who will tell
us it’s empowering not hide from the truth?Who will be bold enough to encourage others to avoid being delineated by
the views of those unwavering in their attempt to curtail faith in more?

“Prejudice is
a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present
inaccessible,” Angelou said.

Who will
teach black women not to be coerced into accepting less by men?Who will massage the conviction of those
broken by old decisions?Who will
elevate the cognizance of those fading into a shell of their vast possibility?

Who will
speak from a place beyond the narrow analysis of former days? We need men and
women who have stood on the banks of promise while the footsteps of hate
marched rapidly to prevent the next step.We need people who were there when courage was found in the middle of
enormous distractions.Those voices will
remind us of who we are, and why it’s important never to go back.

Who will
stand in the pulpit with Martin and Vincent? Who will write poems brewed in the
spirit of Maya?

I’m sitting
here begging God to redeem a world bruised by arrogance and apathy.

Listen to the
whisper in the wind.

I’m sending
you. Stand with the ancestors.Tell the
story of how you have overcome. Tell them, as you travel along the way, a few
more footsteps are required before you stand on the other side of the river.

Eyes closed
now.

It’s time to
read again There Is a River: The Black
Struggle for Freedom in America.Teach me Dr. Harding.Teach me in
your death.

Birth of a Nation

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Carl W. Kenney II

Carl was named the best serious columnist of 2011 by the North Carolina Press Association for his work with the News & Observer's community paper The Durham News and in 2016 by the Missouri Press Association for his columns in the Columbia Missourian. He is a columnist with the News & Observer and Co-Executive Producer of "God of the Oppressed" an upcoming documentary film on black liberation theology. He is a former Adjunct Professor at the University of Missouri - School of Journalism and Adjunct Instructor at Duke University, the Center for Documentary Studies. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He furthered his education at Duke University and attained a Master of Divinity. He was named a Fellow in Pastoral Leadership Development at the Princeton Theological Seminary on May 14, 2005. He is a freelance writer with his commentary appearing in The Washington Post, Religious News Services,The Independent Weekly and The Durham Herald-Sun. Carl is the author of two novels: “Preacha’ Man” and the sequel “Backslide”.
He has led congregations in Missouri and North Carolina